Author: Danila Bustamante

Watch: Queer City / Cicade Queer, by Danila Bustamante.

Bodies that listen, dance, resist, manifest and become visible in our contemporary city. Bodies that dance the sounds of funk music, rap, samba, voguing, waacking, among other sonic styles of contestation, resistance and struggle. Through talks, dinners, experiences and exchanges, a city seeks to discuss how we live, work, share and survive the different LGBT+ stories and realities. The mini-documentary “Cidade Queer / Queer City”, directed by Danila Bustamante, takes its name from a 2016 site-specific, collective curatorial process in São Paulo, Brazil. 

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[*The Cidade Queer film was made from footage of the last two weeks of a year-long project of the same name. The Canadian foundation that partially funded the Cidade Queer project decided to fund a film on it during their site visit and the closure of the year-long project. Recently when I was making my artist profile on the Visual AIDS website, and receiving help from a staffer, I was asked how the Cidade Queer film is related to my own art work. Because I’m currently making a ‘multi-stakeholder, rights-focused, durational’ project on HIV and stigma, perhaps it was a good opportunity to explain how I work to a respected organization. This ‘multi-stakeholder, rights-focused, durational’ way is how I’ve done things for almost 20 years now, starting with freeDimensional. Lately, a colleague, Ismar Tirelli Neto and I have been discussing the idea of ‘minor literature’ proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, and from it I get some ideas on ‘minor production’. Over this 20-year period (of my art practice), I’ve made a few things that don’t get my name directly stamped on them. And the Queer City film–within the Cidade Queer project that was within Lanchonete.org–is a useful ‘item’ to dissect and analyze for this. The film and these memories are tagged in Field Notes because they offer me an opportunity to reflect on broader questions on ‘crediting’ at the intersection of art worlds and social justice frontiers. xo todd]